THE TRUE FACE OF AMERICAN ADDICTION TREATMENT
As lethal epidemics worsen, public funds protect failed systems: unqualified, cronyism workforce and religious programing instead of science-based therapies, with no benefit – or worse
by Clark Miller
Published December 25, 2022
In New Hampshire things got off track,
after they were going so very well for Eric Spofford, described as “one of the most prominent and influential figures in New Hampshire’s response to the opioid epidemic” in this New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) report. Spofford, with his inspiring addict-to-CEO story, “built New Hampshire’s largest addiction treatment network” and, remarkably, without training or education in psychology, human behavior, mental health, or any fields related to compulsive substance use, became a consulted expert, relied upon by New Hampshire’s governor for advice on use of public funds to respond with treatment approaches to the opioid crisis.
There is no evidence to suggest that Spofford’s facilities and programs under his company Granite Recovery Centers (GRC), relying on the same programming universally provided in American addiction treatment – “addiction counselors” without competence or training to effectively treat any mental health condition, let alone the complex, life threatening condition of compulsive substance use, and primary programming consisting of the 12 Steps of the religious subculture Alcoholics Anonymous, established as providing no benefit at best – would or have resulted in benefit to any of the clients whose trust in American addiction treatment made $ millions for Spofford, any more than those failed, lethal, evidence-free sham treatments have benefitted any Americans trapped in raging substance use epidemics.
That criminal scam – known as “addiction treatment” in America – did benefit Eric Spofford.
From the NHPR investigation –
Spofford started his business as overdose deaths were beginning a steep, steady climb in New England. From that first sober home, GRC grew into a sprawling treatment network that now includes three residential treatment facilities, detox, outpatient treatment and multiple sober homes. The need for treatment was — and remains — immense; in 2019, Spofford said he had a waiting list of 40 to 60 people a day.
Part of GRC’s growth has been fueled by state contracts including, since 2019, more than $3 million dollars in no-bid contracts to temporarily house people waiting for treatment or in need of shelter.
If his social media and other public commentary are any indication, Spofford grew wealthy as his business expanded. He frequently posts pictures and videos of his travels by luxury car, yacht and private jet.
As GRC’s footprint grew, so did Spofford’s reputation. Spofford has been repeatedly lauded by New Hampshire politicians and business leaders. In 2015, then-U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte invited him to Washington, D.C., to testify at a Senate hearing on opioid abuse. In 2018, he was recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration as “Young Entrepreneur of the Year for New Hampshire and New England.”
This past summer, Sununu stood side by side with Spofford for a photo op at GRC’s corporate headquarters in Salem. Sununu enthusiastically praised the company, saying, “They’re embedded in their community. People know them. It’s great.” He added that New Hampshire needs “more of this all across the state.”
In 2019, GRC was set to host a visit at its headquarters from then-Vice President Mike Pence. It was canceled at the last minute, when White House officials realized that a high-ranking GRC employee and close friend of Spofford’s, Jeff Hatch, had been caught trafficking fentanyl across state lines. (Hatch was recently sentenced to three years probation.)
. . . Spofford is now 37. This month, he purchased a waterfront home in Miami for $20.75 million. He has expressed ambitions to remain in the addiction treatment industry and expand nationwide. Calling himself a “soldier without a war” in a recent YouTube series, Spofford said he’s “looking at doing it again.”
None of it, to the extent that the NHPR reporting is accurate, benefitted the victims of the apparent pathological narcissism. driving the operation of GRC.
The content of these messages disturbed her, but it was the sender that broke her. The messages came from Eric Spofford, the founder of Granite Recovery Centers (GRC), the parent company of the facility Elizabeth had just left. Spofford is one of the most prominent and influential figures in New Hampshire’s response to the opioid epidemic.
Two weeks later, Elizabeth relapsed. She began using opioids again. While relapses are common in recovery, she said Spofford’s harassment, “definitely, definitely, 100% set me back in my recovery.” NHPR agreed to identify Elizabeth by her middle name only, because she’s concerned about the repercussions of speaking publicly.
Elizabeth is not alone. An NHPR investigation has discovered multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, abusive leadership, and retaliation by Spofford while he was CEO of GRC.
A former GRC employee told NHPR that in 2018, Spofford sexually assaulted her during the workday. In 2020, according to multiple sources, another GRC employee told several colleagues that Spofford had sexually assaulted her, leading some of them, including the chief operating officer, to quit the company. Multiple sources say Spofford told them he negotiated a paid settlement with this employee that had the effect of silencing her.
The compromised heretic
But people who worked with Spofford and witnessed his behavior say he should not be in the addiction treatment field.
“He should be shunned, shamed and probably prosecuted,” said Piers Kaniuka, the former director of spiritual life at GRC, who wrote a book with Spofford in 2019 called “Real People Real Recovery”.
Kaniuka said that when he went to work at GRC, he knew “fully well that [Spofford] had liabilities. I certainly didn’t know he was going to turn out to be like Harvey Weinstein. I wouldn’t have [joined the company] if I had known that.”
He added, “The recovery industry needs a ‘Me Too’ movement.”
That’s too little, too late from Mr. Kaniuka, who spent enough time in the followship of Spofford to author a book with him, initially dismiss allegations of abuse, and serve as his “sponsor” – a guide and mentor – as a fellow acolyte in the religious subculture AA.
With any measure of insight, or integrity, or courage, Kaniuka – who would have had to be familiar with the history and culture of that religious cult – would have used the exceedingly more apt and accurate comparison:
NOT “I certainly didn’t know he was going to turn out to be like Harvey Weinstein”
but instead “going to turn out to be like Bill W.”,
Bill Wilson the founder and spiritual leader of Alcoholics Anonymous and whose bizarre, disempowering, lethal prescriptions delivered as religious edicts, his rank hypocrisy (Bill W. dying of effects of addictive use of his program’s normalized, encouraged, sanctified addictive use of arguably the most lethal substance of abuse in his culture – nicotine by smoking), and established sexual predations against vulnerable women serve as role modeling for Stofford.
As NHPR reports, Spofford’s spiritual mentor is concerned, alarmed –
But it’s different, very different, than for the victims of a criminal like Weinstein, whose assaulted are still around to out him, to support each other.
The pathological, failed treatment systems that Spofford – and Kaniuka – represent are, with or without sexual harassment and abuse, the lethal parody of real, evidence-based treatment, yet are the norm, America’s “gold standard” approach for problem substance use. The victims are increasingly underground, silenced, buried on a national crime scene, too late for a “Me Too” moment.
The remedy is what in an unguarded moment was represented by the wish former NIAAA director Mark Willenbring expressed for that gold standard treatment system.
“What we simply need is a a nice bulldozer, so that we could level the entire industry and start from scratch . . . There’s no such thing as an evidence-based rehab. That’s because no matter what you do, the concept of rehab is flawed and unsupported by evidence.”
– Dr. Mark Willenbring, former director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
The triumph of the know-nothing expert
Wilson, of course, serves as symptom of the profoundly pathological cultural phenomena his life and prescriptions represent – the mass appeal of something for nothing; of salvation for the cost of self-denigration, confessions and payments for amends; of continued lethal substance abuse under the cover of celebration for being “clean and sober”; of predatory, antisocial behaviors under the sheen of “working a spiritual program”; of evil wearing costumes of respect and decency.
There are mini-Bills everywhere. Conspicuously, evangelically, signaling their spiritual status “in recovery” to cover the failure to grow and change toward health. They run the treatment programs and institutions they have infiltrated and protect as cronyism employment systems. They are lethal and protected by the impotence and diminished capacity of cowardly bystanders.
Like Eric Spofford, they have maudlin, inspiring stories of personal triumph over deprivation and derelict behavior, powered by acceptance and submission to spiritual authority, to attain the highest realizations of personal growth and wellness – recognition, status, and power, all to hide the unfilled emptiness.
Spofford built GRC with his personal story at its center: a teenage heroin user turned CEO of a multi-million dollar company, whose struggles made him particularly sensitive to the needs of his clients. Until recently, GRC’s homepage featured a large photo of Spofford and the quote, “Where you’re going, I’ve been.”
In progressive Oregon,
as in every corner of dying America, the vampire ghost of Bill W. grooms its victims.
The pathology is endemic, 12-Step culture infecting every level of private and public substance use programming as if the bizarre, established-as-countertherapeutic religious prescriptions constituted some form of treatment. Prior to Measure 110 decriminalization (and continuing in every other state) substance users are regularly ordered, in established violation of their constitutional rights, by local judges to attend meetings of the religious subculture, with established probability of return to problem substance use of 90 to 95 percent.
Unlike the world’s other experiment with decriminalization – Portugal – Oregon, near the bottom in the U.S. for problem opioid use, offers drug users under decriminalization the same AA-based, nonprofessional sham”treatment” that took Oregon to the lethal bottom, with predictable failure.
From a previous post –
My home state of Oregon has felt its share of pain generated by substance use crises and deficits in mental health treatment. Recently, there’s been reason to feel proud and hopeful, Oregon citizens by direct democracy instituting the first-in-the-nation decriminalization of small amounts of illicit drugs with the intent of shifting away from ineffective criminal justice encounters and toward newly funded effective treatments for problem substance use, the successful ballot measure serving as a model of progressive policy change.
As described in multiple posts, that intent by Oregon voters is betrayed and belied by an intractable history and continued investment in “treatment” that is established for decades as predicting harm, not wellness. To the extent that the new funds are allocated to existing programs, they will predict additional harm and worsening of lethal epidemics, just as they have for decades.
That will be distressing. For the victims of those lethal, sham “treatment” programs and approaches and for their families, that is. Not distressing for the professional classes drawing salaries without need for competence or provision of benefit, beneficiaries of cronyism systems, of the lethal, failed “treatment” programs functioning essentially as sheltered workshops.
The soothing, intoxicating effects of distraction, substituted for accurate understanding of sources of pain, never persist, instead predict illness and lethality. There is grim reality to face, rather than distract from, and distress to experience, if the failures and causes of continuously worsening, lethal epidemics in Oregon and beyond are to be identified and changed. Those causes are built into and key elements of traditional and ongoing “treatment” and prevention for the continuously worsening lethal epidemics: ranging from fictional, invalidated conceptualizations of “addiction” that have never been supported by evidence – to “gold standard” treatment interventions without support of effectiveness – to the dominant “treatment model” for a criminal scam treatment industry based on the 60-year-old, established as countertherapeutic, bizarre prescriptions of a religious subculture – to the lies and false promises of Big Pharma/Medical industries of medical treatments that never come, never will come because compulsive substance use is not remotely a “disease of the brain” or medical condition at all, never has been evidenced as such, that lucrative and lethal fiction invalidated by all relevant lines of evidence, longstanding evidence.
One way that Americans – including and especially the treatment industry professionals who have abdicated ethical responsibility and critical thought in ways that perpetuate sham treatments and harm – distract themselves from the distress of “treatment” failures and generated epidemics is to enlist as useful distractions individuals who have captivating or inspirational stories to tell, testimonials.
Stories, tales: of overcoming addiction, or seemingly helping others to overcome problems within current systems of care, or of how the tragic loss of a loved one due to “addiction” is all about the intractability and treatment resistance of the horrible, chronic brain disease, so untreatable that it was not overcome despite that loved one’s participation in state-of-the-art “treatment” as usual (TAU): expensive “rehab”; perpetual 12-Step meetings; the most advanced medical services and promised cures. That’s just how powerful the disease of “addiction” is.
Those comforting stories, anecdotes, serve two powerful and critically important functions: they 1) protect – by distracting attention away from, leaving unquestioned – the objectively established harm-predicting and evidence-free status of the conceptualizations and practices of current “treatment” for problem substance use and 2) in expressing affirmation of the constructed “chronic, relapsing brain disease” fiction of problem substance use, they provide a lie to cover and rationalize away the lethal failure and culpability of continued exposure of Americans to harm-predicting TAU.
Yes, it is tragic that many more Americans will die, despite the best and latest medical treatments we provide them – it’s the very nature of their “incurable, chronic disease of the brain”.
Distracting, sedating fictions are the stories featured and intended to be reassuring, illustrative, inspiring at conferences
organized and held by Oregon’s business model, managed care organizations like Care Oregon and Columbia Pacific Coordinated Care Organization (CCO) – conferences ostensibly organized to serve as forum and resource for effective approaches to address worsening public health substance use and opioid epidemics.
Below: Epilogue – “He hated his disease”
A young man’s death by overdose – another predictable outcome of failed, sham treatment systems – serves at a conference as a distracting, soothing lie for the addiction profession that failed him
Helping Hands is an example representing practices supported by Oregon’s business- and medical-model managed care system and its use of public healthcare funds in rural coastal Oregon, a region hard-hit by the opioid crisis.
A “Helping Hand” for vulnerable Oregonians –
or a boot back to the streets if coerced religious programming is refused
Helping Hands organization runs homeless shelters in the region served by Columbia Pacific and Care Oregon CCOs, founder and Director Alan Evans motivated and guided by a personal history of homelessness and involvement in the religious subculture Alcoholics Anonymous.
Evans, Director of Helping Hands and responsible for its policies and practices, was the featured keynote speaker at Columbia Pacific’s third annual Opioid Summit presenting the inspiring personal story, “From Homeless to CEO: A Drug Addict’s Story”.
[That addict at rock bottom to successful CEO story sounds familiar, doesn’t it? And just right for the audience of medical and mental health policy heads and managers at the Columbia Pacific conference Evans was invited to speak at. The covert message was clear: Look at me, an amazing success of your remarkably effective treatment approaches, a validation of and reflection of You, and of Me. We need each other, don’t we? As we’ll see, Evan’s featured presence at the event is a true reflection of Oregon’s comatose slide to the lethal bottom of substance use treatment in the nation.]
But the practices Mr. Evans is responsible for at Helping Hands,
a program supported financially and promoted by Care Oregon and Columbia Pacific, are not inspiring, instead are harmful to vulnerable Oregonians, including eviction back to homelessness (with their children) from the shelter if they refuse to participate in coerced religious programming.
Services at the shelters for homeless and substance abusing individuals are described as a “Reentry Program”, but in practice, community members including homeless clients and healthcare professionals understand and refer to the shelters as comprising a “treatment program”(s) for homeless individuals with substance use problems.
The website describes activities provided homeless adults as including “Attendance at AA/NA meetings as needed”, but this description is false according to consistent direct reports of homeless clients there, of community members involved with the program, and of HH staff I have spoken with directly.
By those consistent reports, in order to remain in the program and avoid being evicted and homeless again (and to avoid return to homelessness for their children), adults must attend regular (daily or more frequent) meetings of the religious subculture AA and/or of more overtly Christian religious groups like those of Celebrate Recovery.
That practice of coerced religious programming by participation in 12-Step groups on threat of return to homelessness for the vulnerable Oregon men, women and their children in the shelters:
Is established as a violation of their constitutional rights to freedom from religious coercion
Strongly predicts harm to those individuals by triggering trauma-related symptoms and by exposure to the AA/NA religious subculture, established by evidence as increasing risk of return to problem substance use
Particularly for the homeless, substance abusing populations, with high incidence of trauma- and ACE-related (Adverse Childhood Experiences) symptoms and traits, being forced to participate in anything, let alone stressful environments, is the opposite of trauma-informed care, forcing individuals with high probability of traumatic histories into triggering settings where they are forced to hear stories of traumatic and/or disturbing histories and expected to “share” their histories. Key features of PTSD include severe anxiety, over-reaction and agitation triggered by reminders of trauma, of loss of personal control, of loss of ability to avoid reminders.
Some casualties of Oregon’s use of public healthcare funds to support Helping Hands
C’s story
In my role as behavioral health (BH) therapist in a coastal program, I began providing BH services to C. C’s history is not unusual: severe childhood abuse, neglect, and exposure to violence; chronic PTSD; severe problem alcohol use beginning early adulthood; multiple DUII convictions; history of alcohol intoxication and domestic violence; history of failed TAU treatment episodes including at TFCC in Tillamook County, “They always put me in classes” there, not therapy, and not experienced as helpful to C.
C was sent to Bridges to Pathways detox center, a program provided clinical oversight and programming guidance by Columbia Pacific where, per C’s reports, C was recommended, referred, and encouraged by the director of that program to a program of faith healing, Mountain Ministries Religious Center Church in Rainier, Oregon, where C found C would need to commit to a year-long program of religious indoctrination, with only the Christian Bible allowed as reading material, and strict rules of conduct, experienced by C as programing aimed at C being “brainwashed” and “pretty much a cult . . . I left”.
S’s story
S was an elderly resident of an Oregon north coast community evicted from an apartment, homeless since then, sleeping in a vehicle or at times using dwindling savings to stay in a motel room. S is diagnosed with Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) related to misuse of prescription opioids, and with dementia, contributing to vulnerability along with homelessness, chronically disturbed sleep, social anxiety and alienation, and the memory and other cognitive deficits associated with dementia. S uses cannabis to aid with sleep, in Oregon a legally prescribed medication. S has over-utilized ED (Emergency Department) services and has struggled against cognitive deficits to reliably use prescribed medications including for hypertension. S has been the subject of clinical discussions of an interdisciplinary team to address the needs of particularly vulnerable elders in the area. The clinical director of TFCC, a community mental health agency that partners with Helping Hands, was part of the interdisciplinary meeting.
S has actively pursued stable housing since eviction, has not been successful to date gaining access to the very limited housing resources in the area. S has requested and been disallowed from using housing at Helping Hands, due to S’s use of marijuana, supported by research as effective in providing relief from chronic pain and to be associated with reduced need for use of opioid pain medication and successful taper off opioid pain medication. When I had last contact, S continued to use limited savings to persist, homeless and vulnerable in the community.
W’s Story
W accessed behavioral health (BH) services with me at a program, was diagnosed with a chronic psychotic disorder with symptoms including paranoia, confusion, social anxiety, and hallucinations. After housing with natural supports failed, W accessed a bed at Helping Hands in one of the NW Oregon counties where HH is present. Prior to disengaging from medical and BH services in the program where I practiced, W reported to me that W was increasingly anxious as triggered by forced attendance in the religious groups, consistent with complex and novel social stimuli commonly triggering agitation and anxiety for individuals with psychotic conditions like W’s. I contacted the HH case manager directly by phone, explained W’s clinical picture and needs, likely prognosis with exacerbated symptoms if W continued to be forced to attend the groups. The case manager explained that W would have to continue to attend the religious meetings, as part of requirements of HH programming.
W was evicted by HH and became homeless, fears and symptoms of the disorder then predictably increasing, living in a tent in the woods, repeatedly arrested and jailed for nuisance crimes in the community, like property damage, related to W’s illness and diminished functioning. W’s functioning deteriorated, and W started to fail to appear repeatedly for medical appointments. W was accessing medical care reliably prior to eviction from HH.
Helping Hands represents another program supported by public funds with practices likely unknown to the public: coerced religious programming on threat of eviction to homelessness; intentionally attempting to positively orient residents to participation in religious subcultures like AA where addictive use of the lethal substance tobacco is socially reinforced, increasing risk of chronic pain and acting as a gateway drug for opioids and alcohol.
D’s story
I began working with D in therapy after D had accessed follow up Emergency Room (ER) care after acute alcohol toxicity. D had a lifelong adult history of severe problem alcohol use, with repeated treatment as usual (TAU) treatment failure and decades of involvement in the religious subculture AA, without perceived or practical benefit, per reports of D. When D became homeless in our region, D was offered shelter at one of the Helping Hands programs, where D eventually took on roles as helping in the facilities by working in capacities with other residents. D became overwhelmed by the responsibilities and was abusing prescription sedatives obtained online through the mail, affecting D’s concentration, mood, alertness, and balance. Per D, HH administrators noticed D’s distress and asked D about it, then continued to require D’s assigned duties. D fell and was injured while under the influence of the illicit prescription sedatives, requiring an ER visit and revealing the drug abuse, HH administrators becoming aware. Instead of facilitating and referring D to legitimate treatment for substance use, HH administrators kept D working in a HH facility, with forced programming consisting of required daily meetings of the AA religious subculture, an activity that had not benefitted D over decades of severe alcohol use, by D’s accounts. D had to commute daily to attend the required religious programming. Within weeks, D ended up in the ER with acute alcohol intoxication.
When I last worked in therapy with D, D no longer was attending the religious subculture meetings, instead was provided evidence-based practice (EBP) therapies for chronic PTSD and other conditions by me, was at that time without problem alcohol use since beginning EBP treatment about 8 months before we separated.
B’s Story
B accessed therapy with me at a behavioral health program in the region while a resident with two children at a Helping Hands shelter in a coastal county, B with histories of adult victim of domestic violence and chronic PTSD. B presented with significantly exacerbated anxiety, overwhelmed, including by the high needs of the children for social and mental health services. Stressors included: a child with history of multiple mental health diagnoses at risk of losing school specialized (IEP) status and support, with a nearing deadline for providing supporting documentation; worsened sleep with regular nightmares; fears of being evicted from HH and being homeless again; another younger child with history of likely abuse, struggling at school and with emotional dysregulation.
On top of those stressors and demands on B’s time, B was required to daily attend two different types of religious meetings that “stress me out” or be evicted from Helping Hands.
In a therapy visit, B reported frustration, explaining a recent arrest for a minor crime and short jail stay, the 2 children placed in state custody. B had never committed that misdemeanor crime before, and it was an impulsive act per B, B’s mental state agitated at the time, angry, with intrusive thoughts of the type overwhelming B as reported in a prior visit, about a month ago, “angry . . . going through everything in my head”:
“I’m tired of everything piling up”
“I’m not used to doing all this . . . piled on with chores”
B felt overwhelmed with keeping up with appointments for B and B’s children, requirements from DHS in order to continue to receive TANF, on top of that, demands from “the Shelter” (Helping Hands homeless Shelter) to complete work (“chores”) sometimes morning and night and participate daily in meetings of a religious subculture, on top of that 10 hours of volunteer work weekly.
B explained that B thought it was reasonable to be required by DHS to look for work and to provide 18 hours of volunteer work each week in order to continue with TANF. What overwhelmed B were the extra requirements from “The Shelter”.
B affirmed earlier, reliable reports that B had never struggled with or been treated for a substance use disorder, so the required attendance at the AA meetings, ostensibly related to substance use, seemed arbitrary and counterproductive. B affirmed that being in the AA group meetings, where participants are expected to talk about chaotic and distressing events in their lives, exacerbated B’s anxiety. Those demands have stressed and overwhelmed B, in the context of a history of violence and chronic symptoms of PTSD.
Toward the end of the last session we were able to have B reported, “I have to admit it was a relief in a way to go to jail”, to get away from all of the demands that were overwhelming B. B added, “I love my kids, don’t get me wrong, but my parenting skills are not great”. B reported B was not offered help with parenting skills through Helping Hands.
When I last had contact with B, because of the minor, non-violent and nonpersonal charge, B and B’s children were being evicted from Helping Hands, “I have to find a different Shelter . . . they kicked me out due to the [charge]”.
Helping Hands is a program supported by public healthcare funds
with practices likely unknown to the public and unlikely to have been described at Columbia Pacific’s Opioid Conference by shelter director Alan Evans in his inspirational personal testimonial – “From Homeless to CEO: A Drug Addict’s Story”:
Coerced religious programming on threat of eviction of vulnerable Oregonians to homelessness
Violation of the constitutional rights of vulnerable Oregonians
Positively orienting residents to participation in religious subcultures like AA where addictive use of the lethal substance tobacco is socially reinforced, increasing risk of chronic pain and acting as a gateway drug for opioids and alcohol
An essentially overlooked social and public health pathology and cost of AA and 12-Step religious subculture are the messages to acolytes attending meetings that normalize, enable, and reward continuing problem substance use, “addiction”, of arguably the most addictive and lethal substance sapping public health funds – tobacco.
Remember?
That’s what killed spiritual leader Bill W., whose admonitions to acolytes to not worry about cigarette smoking – its annual public health costs and mortality eclipsing those of other substances (excluding food) combined – were included in the sacred writings, normalized and socially reinforced at meetings since then.
Exposure to meetings of those religious subcultures places vulnerable individuals in settings where continued addictive use of tobacco is promoted by:
– Normalization of smoking as something other than problem substance use
– Celebration of tobacco dependent individuals as “clean and sober”
– Ritualized group use of tobacco at meeting breaks, providing social reinforcement
– Exposure to psychological associations, “triggers” for continued use
Continued use of tobacco predicts increased risk of: chronic pain; dependence on opioid pain medications; return to problem substance use, especially of alcohol and opioids.
But, where were we? Back to Oregon and Oregon’s coordinated care organization (CCO) support for coerced attendance at religious subculture meetings were smoking is normalized and socially reinforced. And for success story Alan Evans, the face of that programming.
CEO of Helping Hands Alan Evans, with no training or background in behavioral health, healthcare, or the treatment of substance use problems,
was not only the featured speaker at Columbia Pacific’s Opioid Summit some years ago, but was appointed by Columbia Pacific CCO to a regional advisory committee charged with providing direction for clinical practices and community supports to address worsening lethal opioid and substance use problems in the region.
Helping Hands continues to expand its programs.
Its supporters include managed care organizations controlling use of public Medicaid healthcare funds in Oregon.
For this –
Below: Epilogue – “He hated his disease”
A young man’s death by overdose – another predictable outcome of failed, sham treatment systems – serves at a conference as a distracting, soothing lie for the addiction profession that failed him
link to the full post, here.
